The Strength and Weakness of the Russian Revolution

Published:Nashe Ekho, Nos. 11 and 12, April 5 and 7, 1907.

      Published according to the text inNashe Ekho.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Foreign Languages Publishing House,1962,

      Moscow,Volume 12,

      pages349-358.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Anarticle with the above title in yesterday’sNarodnaya Dumais
an example of a calm, clear, simple exposition of the real differences in
principle among the Social-Democrats. It is as pleasant and useful to conduct a
dispute on such a basis, as it is unpleasant and impossible to answer the
hysterics ofPrivet[5]orOtgoloski.

Toget down to business. Differences have arisen over the appraisal of the
Cadets and the Narodniks. With regard to the Cadets, according to the perfectly
correct opinion ofNarodnaya Duma, the differences boil down to the
question ofwhom they represent. “The middle and petty, mainly
urban, bourgeoisie,” answersNarodnaya Duma. “The economic
basis of these parties is provided by a section of the middle landlords and the
middle bourgeoisie, especially the bourgeois intelligentsia, while a section of
the urban and rural petty-bourgeois democrats still follow these parties merely
by force of tradition and because they are deliberately deceived by the

			      liberals.”[1]

Clearlythe Mensheviks are more optimistic in their assessment of the Cadets
than we are. They gloss over or deny their links with the landlords, while we
stress them. They stress their links with the urban democratic petty
bourgeoisie, while we consider those links extremely weak.

Asfar as the landlords are concerned,Narodnaya Dumasays
that our statement inNashe Ekho, No. 7, is naïve—
the statement in which we estimated twenty landlords, not in the past
(that was a mistake on the part ofNarodnayaDuma) but in thepresentCadet group in the

				Duma.[2]There are millionaires and high-ranking officials even among the
    Social-Democrats, saysNarodnaya Dumaironically.

Feebleirony! Everybody realises that the Singers, Aronses and Nalivkins are
instances of individuals going over from the bourgeoisie to the
proletariat. But, gentlemen, would you seriously insist that twenty landlords
(out of the seventy-nine members forming the Constitutional-Democratic group,
i.e., aquarter) are individual followers of sixty bourgeois
intellectuals, and not vice versa? Will you insist that it is the landlords who
are conducting a liberal-intellectualist policy and not the liberal
intellectuals who are conducting the policy of the landlords? Your joke about
Singer and
Comrade Nalivkin—that was nothing more than a nice little joke to cover up
a hopeless position.

Thecomposition of the Cadet Duma group, of course, is not the main proof, but
merely a symptom. The main proof lies, first of all, in the history of landlord
liberalism in Russia (asNarodnaya Dumaadmits); secondly— and
this is the main thing—it lies in an analysis of thepresent-daypolicy of the Constitutional-Democrats. “The Cadet agrarian policy isessentially[note this] a landlord policy” (Nashe Ekho,
No. 7). “Cadet ’liberalism’ is the liberalism of the bourgeois lawyer who
reconciles the peasant with the landlord, and does that to the advantage of the
landlord”

			      (ibid.).[3]

NarodnayaDumahas no answer to this argument.

Tocontinue. How do they demonstrate the class links between the
Constitutional-Democratic Party and the urban democratic petty bourgeoisie? By
using election statistics— the towns return mostly Cadets, that is a
fact. But it is no proof. In the first place, our election law gives preference
to thenon-democraticstrata of the urban bourgeoisie. Everybody knows
that the popular assemblies expressmore preciselythe views and temper
“of thedemocraticpetty bourgeoisie of the
towns”. Secondly, the Cadets are stronger and the Lefts weaker in the
urban curias of the big cities than in those of the small towns. This is shown
by the statistics on electors. Hence it follows that the Cadets represent,not the democratic petty bourgeoisie, but the liberal middle bourgeoisie. The
bigger the town, the sharper the antagonism between the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie, and the stronger the Cadets in the urban (bourgeois) curia, as
compared with the Lefts. Thirdly, in twenty-two big cities where there was a
Left bloc, the Rights obtained 17,000 votes, the Octobrists 34,000, the Cadets,
74,000, and the Lefts 41,000 votes. It was possible atone goto
deprive the Cadets of such a large number of votes, only because they arenotdemocrats. Everywhere, all over the world, liberal lawyers have
deceived the democratic petty bourgeoisie, and have been exposed by the
socialists.

“Isit true,” askedNarodnaya Duma, “that our middle
and petty bourgeoisie are already interested in the suppression of the
revolution so as to break down the forces of the proletariat, which constitute
a direct threat to them?” And itself answers: “It is definitely not
true.”

Thesewords provide adefinitely untrueexpression ofourviews. This, comrades, means polemics without principles. You know very well
that we distinguish between the counter-revolutionary nature of the Cadets and
that of the Octobrists; that we do not includethe petty bourgeoisiein
our accusation of counter-revolutionariness; that we believe that the Cadet
landlords fear not only the workers, but the peasants as well. You are
distorting, not objecting.

Thenext argument byNarodnaya Dumaactually is an objection. The
Cadets become more moderate and more reactionary as the revolution declines, and
not as it rises, i.e., not because of their counter-revolutionary nature but
because of their weakness. The Cadets’ tactics, saysNarodnaya Dumain italics “arenot the tactics of counter-revolutionary strength but
the tactics of revolutionary impotence”.

Itthus appears that the Cadets are revolutionaries too, but only impotent
revolutionaries. A monstrous conclusion to draw. To arrive at this howling
incongruity, they had to argue from a radically erroneous premise. That error is
the denial of the landlord character of the Cadets (in Russia thelandlordis counter-revolutionary either in the Black-Hundred and
Octobrist manner, or in the Cadet manner) and the denial of the fact that
bourgeoisintellectualspro dominate among the Cadets. If we rectify
these two errors,we get the correct conclusion:the tactics of the Constitutional-Democrats
    are the tactics of landlord counter-revolution and bourgeois-intellectual
    impotence. The landlords are a counter-revolutionary force. So are
    the big bourgeoisie. The bourgeois intellectual and the liberal government
    official are their cowardly servants, who hide their servility to
    counter-revolution behind a mask of “democratic” hypocrisy.

Itis not true that the Cadets “shifted to the Right” only with the
decline, not with the upsurge, of the revolution. RememberNachalo,[6]comrades fromNarodnaya Duma. Remember
articles in the spirit of “Witte Is the Agent of the Bourse, Struve Is the
Agent of Witte”. Those were excellent articles! And those were excellent
times—we did not then disagree with the Mensheviks in our assessment of
the Cadets.... To provide a correct picture of the Cadets’ attitude to the
upsurge, or upsurges, of the revolution, we must say—whenthe
revolution shows itself in the streets, the Cadet shows himself in the
minister’s ante-chamber.

Struvewent to Witte in November 1905. Somebody from the Cadets visited somebody
from the Black Hundreds in June 1906. Milyukov went to Stolypin on January 15,
1907. As it was, so will it be....

Givingan economic basis for its views on the Cadets,Narodnaya Dumaconcludes:

“Owingto the Russia’s poor urban development and the dominant
influence of big enterprises in urban industry, our urban middle and petty
bourgeoisie has too small an influence on the general economic life of the
country to feel itself the independent political force that those classes in
England and France at one time felt themselves to be....” Very good and
perfectly correct. Only itdoes notapplyto the Cadets. And,
furthermore, thereby disappears that allegedly Marxist counterposing of
“big urban progressive” and “petty rural backward”
bourgeoisie that has often been used in an attempt to justify Menshevik
tactics.... “They cannot make the proletariat their tool because the
proletariat is already fighting under its own Social-Democratic banner....”Very true! “This is the source of all its wavering, of all its
indecisiveness, in the struggle against the autocratic semi-feudal
system....” Again very true, but it does not apply to the Cadets, it
applies to theTrudovikparties and groups who find their support not
only in the rural but in the urban petty bourgeoisie!

“Thisrelative weakness of urban bourgeois democracy also ex plains the
   fact that as soon as our bourgeois democrats begin shifting to the Left they
   immediately lose the urban soil under their feet and become entangled in the
   peasant-Narodnik swamp....”

“Thisrelative weakness of urban bourgeois democracy also ex plains the
   fact that as soon as our bourgeois democrats begin shifting to the Left they
   immediately lose the urban soil under their feet and become entangled in the
   peasant-Narodnik swamp....”

True,a thousand times true! We did not even dare dream of such complete
confirmation of Bolshevik tactics on the part ofNarodnaya
Duma. “As soon as our bourgeois democrats begin shifting to the
Left, they become Narodniks.” That is exactly how it is—Leftbourgeois democratsareNarodniks. The Cadets only pretend to be
democrats; actually they are not democrats at all. Therefore, insofar as the
proletariat have to carry on the bourgeois revolution in the company of
bourgeois democracy, they are so far fated to act in a political
“bloc” in the broad sense of the term, that including not only
electoral and not only parliamentary agreements, but also joint action without
any agreementwith the Left, that is, the Narodnik, petty bourgeoisie,
against the Black Hundreds and against the Cadets!

Quoderat demonstrandum.

Ifwe recognise that the “Narodniks are the Left neighbours of the
Cadets”, that they “constantly waver between the Cadets and the
Social-Democrats”, this must inevitably lead to a recognition of the
Bolshevik policy—compel the Narodniks to take the side of
Social-Democracy, against the Black Hundreds and against the
Constitutional-Democrats.

TheMensheviks are trying to weaken the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from
their admissions, or to avoidit by reference to the fact that the peasantry, while being“more
    revolutionary and more democratic”than the liberals, are, at
    the same time, “imbued with reactionary social utopias” and are
    striving to “turn back the wheel of history in the sphere of
    economy”.

Thisargument, common enough in our Social-Democratic literature, contains a big
error from the standpoint of logic and of economic history. Here yards are
compared with pounds, the reactionary nature of peasant ideas about the
socialist revolution is compared with the reactionary nature of liberal politics
in the bourgeois revolution.

Ifthe peasants undoubtedly favour reactionary utopias in respect of the tasks
of socialism, the. liberal bourgeoisie, in respect ofthose sametasks, favours reactionary excesses similar to those of June 1848 or May 1871.

If,in thepresent, i.e., the bourgeois, revolution, the peasants and
their ideologists, the Narodniks, conduct a reactionary policy as compared with
the liberals, a Marxist would never recognise the Narodniks as being more to the
Left, more revolutionary and more democratic than the liberals.

Obviouslythere is something wrong here.

Comparethe agrarian policy of the liberals with that of the Narodniks. Does it
contain features that are at present economically reactionary? In both parties
the urge to limit mobilisation of land ownership is reactionary. The
bureaucratic nature of the Cadet agrarian policy (landlordbureaucraticland committees) makes its reactionary nature mush more dangerousin
practiceand immediately. And so, on this point the comparison does not
favour the liberals.

“Equalitarianism”in land tenure.... The idea of the equality of
small producers is reactionary because it is an attempt to seek in the past and
not in the future the solution of the tasks of the socialist revolution. The
proletariat does not bring with itself the socialism of equality for petty
proprietors, but the socialism of large-scale socialised production. But that
same idea of equality is the fullest, most consistent and most decisive
expression of bourgeois-democratic tasks. Those Marxists who have forgotten
this are advised to turn to Volume I of Marx’sCapitalor to
Engels’sAnts-Dühring. The idea of equality most completelyexpresses the struggle against all the survivals of the serf owning system, the
struggle for the broadest and purest development of commodity production.

Ourpeople frequently forget this when they speak of the reactionary nature of
Narodnik “equalitarian” agrarian projects.

Itis not only ideologically that equality expresses the most complete
implementation of the conditions of free capitalism and commodity
production. Materially too, in the sphere of the economic relations of an
agriculture emerging from the state of serfdom, the equality of petty producers
is a condition for the broadest, most complete, free and rapid development of
capitalist agriculture.

Thisdevelopment has been proceeding in Russia for a long time. It has been
accelerated by the revolution. The only question is—will it follow, say,
the Prussian type (the retention of landlord farming with theKnechtin
bond age and paying “according to a just estimate” for a starvation
minimum of land), or the American type (the abolition of landlord farming and
the transfer of all the land to the farmers).

Thatis the basic problem of our entire bourgeois-democratic revolution, the
question that will decide its defeat or victory.

TheSocial-Democrats demand the transfer of all the land to the peasants without
compensation, i.e., they struggle determinedly for the second type of
capitalist development, the type that is advantageous to the people. In the
peasants’ struggle against the feudal-minded landlords, the idea of equality is
the strongest ideological impetus in the struggle for land—and the
establishment of equality between petty producers is the most complete abolition
of all and every survival of serfdom. The idea of equality, therefore, is the
most revolutionary idea for the peasant movement, not only because it stimulates
the political struggle, but also because it stimulates the economic purging of
agriculture of serfdom’s survivals.

Insofaras the Narodniks hold the opinion that equality may be maintained on a
basis of commodity production and that that equality may be an element of the
development to socialism, their views are erroneous and their socialismreactionary. That is something every Marxist should know and remember. The
    Marxist, however, would be unfaithful to his historical analysis of the
    specific tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution if he were to
    forget that this very idea of equality and the many different equalitarian
    plans are the fullest possible expression of the tasks of the bourgeois
    revolution,notthe socialist, and that they express the tasks,
    not of the struggle against capitalism, but of the struggle against the rule
    of the landlords and bureaucracy.

Onealternative is evolution of the Prussian type—the serf-owning landlord
becomes a Junker; the landlords’ power in the state is consolidated for a
decade; monarchy; “military despotism, embellished in parliamentary
forms” in stead of democracy; the greatest inequality among the rural and
non-rural population. The second alternative is evolution of the American
type—the abolition of landlord farming; the peasant becomes a free farmer;
popular government; the bourgeois-democratic political system; the greatest
equality among the rural population as the starting point of, and a condition
for, free capitalism.

Suchare the historical alternatives that are coloured by the hypocrisy of the
Cadets (who would lead the country along the first path) and the socially
reactionary utopianism of the Narodniks (who would lead the country along the
second path).

Itis obvious that the proletariat must devote all its efforts to supporting the
latter path. Only by so doing will the labouring classes speedily get rid of the
last bourgeois illusions—for the socialism of equality is the last
bourgeois illusion of the petty proprietor. Only in that case will the masses of
the people, learning from reality and not from books, speedily gain practical
experience of the impotence of all types of equalitarian plans, impotence in
face of the power of capital. Only in that case will the proletariat speedily
shake off “Trudovik” (i.e., petty-bourgeois) traditions, rid itself
of the bourgeois-democratic tasks that inevitably devolve upon it now, and
devote itselfentirelyto its own, truly class. (i.e., socialist)
tasks.

Itis only failure to understand the relationship between bourgeois-democratic
and socialist tasks that leads someSocial-Democrats to fear the consummation of the bourgeois revolution.

Onlyfailure to understand the tasks and essential nature of the bourgeois
revolution can give rise to arguments like the following: “It [our
revolution] has not, in the final analysis, been engendered by the interests of
the peasants,but[??] by the interests of developing bourgeois
society”, or, “this revolution is bourgeois and,therefore[!!??] it cannot proceed under a peasant banner and peasant
leadership” (Narodnaya Duma, No. 21, April 4).

From this it seems that peasant farming in Russia does not rest on a bourgeois
basis, but on some other! The interests of the peasant masses are precisely the
interests of the most complete, rapid and extensive “development of
bourgeois society”, a development of the “American” and not
the “Prussian” type. It is exactly for this reason that the
bourgeois revolutionmay proceed“under peasant leadership”
(more correctly: under proletarian leadership, if the peasants, wavering
between the Cadets and the Social-Democrats, in generalfollowthe
Social-Democrats). The bourgeois revolution under the leadership of the
bourgeoisie can only be an unconsummated revolution (i.e., strictly speaking,
not revolution but reform). It can be a real revolution only under the
leadership of the proletariat and the peasantry.

[1]See p. 137 of this volume.—Ed.

[2]See p. 336 of this volume.—Ed.

[3]Ibid.—Ed.

[4]Since the government has suppressedNarodnaya Dumawe shall,
as far as possible, eliminate direct polemics with that paper, and deal
with Marxism’s assessment of Narodism in principle.—Lenin

[5]Privet(Greetings)—a Menshevik weekly published in
St. Petersburg in March 1907; two issues appeared.

[6]Nachalo(The Beginning)—a legal Menshevik weekly
published in St. Petersburg in November and December 1905.